Engaging

While we all wish we were rich and had the best equipment and editing tools and of course time, most of us do not. With this in mind I have to say that after spending a couple years of Video class with Ryan, conceptually I believe we connect. I think it is also important to point out that in between working on videos for class Ryan and I have conversations. The conversations we have though aren’t the typical conversations you hear as you walk by a bunch of college students sitting in the student center-we have had conversations about life and how we see life, and how we react to the issues we have to deal with in our life. It seems to me that Ryans values are similar to mine as we both can agree that family is such an important part of life, as well as being optimistic and looking/thinking and being outside of the box. I have always appreciated our conversations and thoughts, which is why I believe I truly appreciate his concepts and work the most. Visually, I envy Aymann’s camera and eye for a beautiful shot, but I feel that Costa’s projects-visually are the most captivating for me. To me if you have a video that is trying to say something, symbolically speaking through a video can be one of the most beautiful things. I saw this most in the video he did where his friend read her poem. He captured an essence of not only his friend and her clear passion for her writing, but he made it a visually captivating representational video. I am pretty certain that once he got his video running smoothly, we silently watched. That shows how we just soaked up the whole experience of his video, when it was simply projected on a screen in front of us. For a video to really draw me in symbolically and visually is definitely a part of doing video that I strive to achieve. 

Putting my thoughts here:

Since I was little I have always been able to appreciate and see the world around me in what I believed to be a much different way than others. When looking at things, whether it is a piece of art or a building, a tree, or even garbage on the sidewalk, I have always stopped to think how that particular object came to be. Thinking of the incredible feat to build some of the buildings we see every day is taken for granted. Yet I feel that a lot of what we are all so used to seeing and living within is taken for granted.  So much of the world that we live in is given and especially for my own generation-expected. We drive to class, we go home to a heated house, turn on the television and are able to be in another world. We can drive to the movies, the mall, so many different types of restaurants, or hang out with friends in a public place. Yet how many people think about how we became part of this path which we follow every day? To me, I think it is so important to appreciate every culture, religion and way of life and to know about them and compare them to your own. That type of knowledge, in my eyes, is one of the greatest knowledge you can have-and use. So when we talk about wayfinding, or space and place to me those are simply names or categories to put the idea of acknowledging and realizing the world around us. Yet, acknowledging and realizing is one thing-acting upon what you know is the difficult part.

I wish so very much that I could have more time to focus on one class, or one job at a time, being able to put my full effort and mind to it. Yet, with the way our society is, so quick-paced and multifaceted, that is literally impossible. Needless to say, I wish I had more time to focus on Neighborhood Narratives and making and interacting with the video portion of it, because to me, this class is something everyone should take just to open their mind a little.

When it comes to working with or within the public realm, I do admit sometimes I am weary, but that is usually only because if I am to put something out to the public in public I want it to be perfect-to be so well thought out and to simply work. If I had the time to solely devote to working on one thing to put out to the public, I believe any reservations I had would be gone. I am not shy. Even when I talk with friends or family I thoroughly enjoy giving my opinion on any matter at hand and I usually have a very strong opinion on most topics. As I am a Journalism major, if there is one thing that I have learned it is that the media is an extremely powerful tool that is used mostly for bad, but can be very well used for good. As a person, and growing up with the values my parents instilled in me, I also believe it is so important to show our society what is wrong and to help our society open their eyes to the world we live in and the people we live with.

I often get teased because I smile too much. Or people question how I can have so much on my plate yet still be optimistic about life. Yet, this is where I see myself as a different thinker than others. This is how I see my own wayfinding having a very positive impact on my life. Realizing how space and place work is important. However realizing that we can change spaces and places and open them up is even more important. If we step back and look at how our society and our government works at this moment in time, I know that many people would be surprised and scared to see that corruption and the investment in power by the people in power is how our lives are shaped. How can they call our country a melting pot if we continue to reject different cultures and languages? We can and do because it is not beneficial for the powers of our country and society to have too much diversity and “knowledge”. If we as a society were more aware of how other cultures worked and were able to accept those different cultures we would most likely be able to function more to the benefit of us, of the working class. Yet, our society believes what we see on TV or on the internet and most do not go any further to question or research what is going on. It saddens me to know that some of my peers do not even realize we are in a war, or what we are in a war for. We as a society have become too consumed in ourselves and our comfort as we walk the paths put out before us blindly. Somehow I know I want to help open the eyes of our society, and I feel that the way we work in our class and the pieces we read give us the desire and drive to do just that.

Video Installation Art

While reading this article I can't help to think about the 5 senses. Sight, sent, touch, hearing and taste. Video installation art captures the senses of the viewer to become an all senses experience rather than a single-sense experience. The idea of presentational arts being considered, "hybrid and complex" allowing the artist to represent not only one tense but multiple tenses such as past, present and future layered within makes the space in which video installation art encompasses both real and imaginary-giving an almost infinite spectrum of subject matter to attend to.

Thinking about how the television engulfs us as a society into it's bright flashing lights of commercials and product placements to the extent where it is able to shape our culture into something we may not even want (dare I mention the Jersey Shore?) is  quite incredible. To think of the power one has when they are able to capture the senses of another human being. The power to mold their thinking and change long time traditional cultures and values. Not too many generations before our own (what are we, generation x now?) values and traditions seemed to be much more important. Yet as television and mass media marketing began to engulf our society, we lost sight of those traditions and values and literally became a society whose very thoughts and movements are based on the electronics surrounding our senses. In layman's terms: the big business controlling today's media market realized the power of video, the power they held in their hands to change society-not for the greater good of the whole society, but for the greater good of big business and to fuel the corruption that is us now.

To have that very same "power" as an artist, and to be able to maybe bring our society to a level away from media and products and back down to values and what's real and important in our world-is an incredible sense, an incredible power and yet at the same time, a very delicate power.

Some video artists used multiple televisions and video channels to display or express their art/opinions etc. This overload of images can be both beneficiary and yet at the same time could be just too much to get any point across. Yes it is true, our culture absolutely can not sit still and is so easily distracted that we need fast, bright images and loud extravagant. But yes, it is also true that thinking about spilling our culture, our art, our media into other multiple dimensions (3D and perhaps...4D??) makes the plight of the loss of some traditional values and cultural beliefs bearable. Not only bearable actually-acceptable, and dare I say, exciting?